conanthelibrarian

willyone

I've bought only Onkyo receivers since 1985. I've owned three in that time and they all still work perfectly. I started with a 25W quartz lock tuner and currently have a 5.1 A/V receiver. When I started buying them they were the only brand offering discrete amplification. That is, most receivers had one amp to power all channels but Onkyo has always had an amplifier for EACH channel which produces much cleaner sound. Anyone not familiar with receivers should know you will never be sorry you spent your money for an Onkyo! I've been an audiophile all my life and started back before digital when we chose components based on least THD (Total Harmonic Distortion). I've always worked my Onkyos hard everyday and they've held up. Before A/V receivers I only used them for music but after the advent of the A/V receiver I've used them even harder as the brain to my home entertainment system. Personally, I'll never buy anything but an Onkyo.

alextse

I've had three different Onkyo receivers. My current TX-NR606 is dying due to a known defect in the HDMI handshake and it's been taking longer and longer to get the connection. We always start the system up 5 minutes ahead of time to make sure it's "warmed up." As this one is a 525, that suggests it is a later model (2 vs 0). I just got a 717 to replace my 606, it reportedly does not have the HDMI issue. So I still like Onkyo but I'm now more wary than I was of their quality.

lorenzodemedici

bcollins21 wrote:I'm a 62 year old luddite. Can I hook up a freaking turntable and existing speakers to this?

Sure. You can use it just like it was 30 years ago. One exception. These things don't come with phono inputs any longer (no criticism of this Onkyo, none of them do). So you'll need to buy a little phono preamp for your turntable. But they are not expensive.
This Onkyo is pretty Luddite friendly since it has lots of analog inputs on the back panel. You can just ignore everything that says "HDMI" or "digital".
As a non Luddite, my advice to you is to repent in your ways before it is too late. But if you want to keep your Windows 7 computer, that's perfectly fine. Microsoft is lucky that an angry mob didn't burn down the factory. Oh, wait. There is no factory.

lorenzodemedici

arnoldstrife wrote:So why is there a .2? instead of .1. I understand there's 2 pre-amp sub out but is that any different than 1 pre-amp sub out with a spliter or why you would need 2 pre-amp sub out in the first place?

I don't know about 5.1 vs. 5.2 But about the sub outs, two is obviously to make it more convenient for people who use two subwoofers (left and right). Depending on how the preamp out stage is configured, using a splitter could theoretically cause problems, although in the real world it's unlikely.

lorenzodemedici

You're getting a helluva lot of receiver for two hundred bucks. You just have to hope that there was only one "made in China" defect that they had to fix. I wonder if a repaired defective unit is statistically more likely, or less likely, to go bad again. If you're an optimist, you could say that it was fixed, so it's probably all good now. If you're a pessimist, you could say that it's probably gonna break again. I'll bet the manufacturers know these things. But they aren't telling.

Entropy156

bcollins21 wrote:I'm a 62 year old luddite. Can I hook up a freaking turntable and existing speakers to this?

Speakers, yes. Turntable, a qualified no. You *can* hook one up, but you'd have to buy and run it through what's called a pre-amp first, as this receiver doesn't have a built in pre-amp that can deal with phono-level signal. Translation: you could hook it up, but you (and the receiver) wouldn't hear anything because the signal coming from the turntable is too quiet and you need an external pre-amp to make it louder.

aarphacker

geod998

One thing I can say- the price of Onkyo s has skyrocketed on Amazon in the last month, I was ready to pull the trigger on a tx-nr616 7.2 and the price went up almost $100 overnight. That amazed me with the Holidays coming and all. All Onkyos were in the Amazon top 10 a while back-dunno 'bout now. And Yes, the 525,626,727 etc are this years models-the 515,616,717 etc are 2012 models. YO guys over at Amazon-I want my 616 back at $320-ish for a day-I bought the gift cards now I have nothing to spend them on!!!

ibbleschitz

bcollins21 wrote:I'm a 62 year old luddite. Can I hook up a freaking turntable and existing speakers to this?

if it doesn't have a phono Input, you can use a little box from Pyle that works rather nicely for hooking up your turntable for about 20 bucks If I recall Correctly. and yeah I've got a 1980ish Pioneer Turntable hooked up to my receiver that way and the sound is better than my old receiver that had a phono input.

jbitzerjr

bclinton1 wrote:Roll the dice with Onkyo. Just google "problems with Onkyo receivers" you will find a lot of frustrated owners. Their support sucks and the quality of their receivers is at best questionable....

You can google anything in the world with the word "problems" and you'll get results. I've not had any issues with either of my Onkyo receivers.

Madmax31

I bought one similar a year or so ago from Woot,(HT-RC430 5.1-Channel 3D Ready). My friend bought a Sony that I actually like a little better for less money, so in my opinion you're paying a little for the name.

Anyway most receivers have a 3.5 aux in plug, but not my Onkyo. Does anyone know what I need to hook up a phone? When my friends come over and want to stream there phone to my receiver they get irritated.

webwidejosh

Why are these so freakin' huge? I currently have a TX-SR505S which seems to have even more inputs than this and its smaller. I'd like to move to something with app functionality, networking, and true HDMI support.

I have a thin HDTV hung on the wall and it seems silly to have a cabinet just to house this. Has anyone had luck mounting this vertically, or moving to a closet or something? I'd love to hear some creative ideas on how to have great sound without the huge box dominating value living room space.

Does anyone know how the zone2 sound works? My current amp will only support analog sources for 'B' speakers. What a freakin' let down when I tried to run sound from my Roku to the bedroom. :/

ClarkJeff

Just a little story about my Onkyo experience... In 03/2009, I bought a refurbished HTS-9100THX directly from Onkyo along with a 1 year (I think) extended warranty. The receiver had a refurbished sticker, but everything else appeared new. Around 09/2010, I started having issues with the composite video ports and OSD freezing, so sent it in for Warranty repair. Around 08/2013, I noticed white video artifacts on some HDMI ports and others just blacking out. Woot actually had another Onkyo receiver on sale that I was about to purchase, but decided to contact Onkyo first. Onkyo repaired the unit for free (I paid shipping there), years out of warranty. Apparently, they've had some quality/reputation issues lately, but are trying to change that. Would I buy an Onkyo again? ABSOLUTELY.

gdeakin

webwidejosh wrote:Does anyone know how the zone2 sound works? My current amp will only support analog sources for 'B' speakers. What a freakin' let down when I tried to run sound from my Roku to the bedroom. :/

Same issue here... Per the manual, this one won't solve your problem--Zone 2 is analog, tuner or USB only.

mysterytrout

I've had way too many problems with my 606 to ever consider an Onkyo product again. Whenever I see one of their products come up I feel duty-bound to mention their poor HMDI design and sub par customer service.

The Pioneer receiver I bought in the 90's is still going strong even relocated to the outside porch. And the Denon I bought to replace the Onkyo is solid.

I hope those who have Onkyos never have any problems because once they start...

geod998

Madmax31 wrote:I bought one similar a year or so ago from Woot,(HT-RC430 5.1-Channel 3D Ready). My friend bought a Sony that I actually like a little better for less money, so in my opinion you're paying a little for the name.

Anyway most receivers have a 3.5 aux in plug, but not my Onkyo. Does anyone know what I need to hook up a phone? When my friends come over and want to stream there phone to my receiver they get irritated.

you could either get a Bluetooth adapter,connect said phones wired or wirelessly to your comp. network or buy this new one which has that stuff built in. You could also buy a RCA-3.5 adapter online or at radio shack type joints(cheap)-if you wish to use a wire

geod998

bclinton1 wrote:Roll the dice with Onkyo. Just google "problems with Onkyo receivers" you will find a lot of frustrated owners. Their support sucks and the quality of their receivers is at best questionable....

most of the problems are either firmware update related-or just "uninformed/under informed" consumers. You see the same stuff for every brand. Most of the problems I've seen relate to situations which 90+% of owners would never encounter. The price of these units wouldn't be skyrocketing and they wouldn't be top choices on Amazon if they were truly that bad. There are plenty of choices out there. Onkyo just seems to consistently offer a better feature set for the buck.---Just sayin

billthegunowner

Entropy156 wrote:Speakers, yes. Turntable, a qualified no. You *can* hook one up, but you'd have to buy and run it through what's called a pre-amp first, as this receiver doesn't have a built in pre-amp that can deal with phono-level signal. Translation: you could hook it up, but you (and the receiver) wouldn't hear anything because the signal coming from the turntable is too quiet and you need an external pre-amp to make it louder.

What's a turntable? LOL. I had to hook my turntable up to an old receiver I have because most new receivers do not have a pre-amp anymore.

So is AM/FM included in the analog source? Would I be able to have the TV/Cablebox (hdmi) playing on the TV hooked up to it, and have my Zone 2 speakers outside playing the AM broadcast radio? (football games)

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